


god's a stand-up comedian (he's got a special on hbo)

by olivias



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Stand-up comedians AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivias/pseuds/olivias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>bellamy and clarke are both stand-up comedians, and as bellamy insists: they're the comedy world brangelina. everybody loves them. they're good, maybe the best. then the mount weather fiasco ensues, and after that, london. as a result, clarke commits some serious comedy crime: she steals bellamy's jokes, and tells him goodbye. </p><p>ba dum tss. the punchline is he still loves her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	god's a stand-up comedian (he's got a special on hbo)

**Author's Note:**

> My first The 100 fic! Yay. This should be fun, right? So I needed to deal with Bellamy's feelings of betrayal, but not in a way so serious that I'd end up breaking my own heart more than the show already does, so I thought: WHY NOT MAKE THEM STAND-UP COMEDIANS? Obviously AU, first chapter of what I think will be just a few, probably not more than three to five. Hope you enjoy! ♥
> 
> (Title from Coleman Hell's song "Sitcom".)

If six months ago, anyone had dared tell Bellamy that he’d be standing in a corner of the bar he used to love, watching Clarke with wide-eyed eyes and the most ironically comical expression of betrayal on his face, he wouldn’t believe them. There was more, back then, than the fact that he didn’t really think she’d make it to the most popular—and expensive—bar for stand-up comedy in NYC.

For starters, it was just weird to be back in a comedy place with her, but she being onstage and he lurking in the shadows. Especially after accidentally bringing the improv school Mount Weather to ruin with too harsh criticism that Clarke was entirely part of as well when they were both interviewed, but that somehow she took the blame—and the glory—entirely.

He felt bad for what had happened, truly. So many young comedians that could be on the rise, and now they wouldn’t have a shot. He felt like _grieving_ , even though his sister Octavia rolled her eyes at that, telling him he was being ridiculous, as it was just comedy after all, and shouted on he phone, later apologizing, saying she’d just done a nice high kick in her Muay Thai training.

It was shortly after the Mount Weather disaster.

He did use to think of them as the Brangelina of the comedy world. 

That was before.

On the stage, Clarke finishes her joke with grace and raised eyebrows, a perpetual smirk on her face that to this day still makes Bellamy want to smile, even though he shouldn’t, and it makes him feel weird. The whole room cracks up on cue, a guy close to Bellamy whistling madly, clapping his hands together, the place becoming a mess of applause, whistles, and, of course, laughter.

“Thank you, thank you,” Clarke says, twice, bowing down for further comedy.

It works. The crowd goes even crazier at that, somehow her fake modesty making them all explode in much bigger, stronger, much anticipated love. 

She used to tell him she loved him twice too. Love you, love you.

Bellamy wrinkles his nose, shaking his head and looking away.

“Are you done with the self-pity party?” he hears behind him.

The fact that he’s managed to hear something in the middle of the mess tells him that the person is close enough and, when he turns, he finds he’s right. Lincoln is standing behind him, with his arms crossed, making his biceps look even more gigantic. His shaved head and the shirt that looks too tight somehow make him mingle with the security people that make sure nobody gets too close to Clarke, Bellamy definitely included. Bellamy stares at his brother-in-law for a second, and he feels like crying.

“I had to see it for myself,” he says instead, because he’s a big boy, and a brave one at that. Lincoln just nods, like he understands, even though he doesn’t, because his sister would never do to him what Clarke had done to Bellamy.

“I know,” Lincoln tells him, and puts a hand on his shoulder.

Clarke starts speaking again to the audience, and Bellamy turns his head away from Lincoln, to watch her. She’s wearing ripped jeans and a black a top, her curly hair cascading over her shoulders as she walks around the stage. To a bar as extravagant as this, nobody really dresses like that—except for Lincoln, of course. If he looks around, everyone’s dressing the most expensive item in their wardrobes. But not Clarke. 

It makes him angry somehow, that she manages to be so good without having to dress up. So good with what she stole from him.

“So I was in Michigan the other day,” she starts, talking to the microphone more than to the audience.

It’s infuriating how it doesn’t make her look self-absorbed. Instead, it just makes her seem more at ease with herself, as if she’s doing all of this for a friend. Bellamy wants to walk onstage and interrupt that, take the microphone from her, and ask her screaming what it feels like to conquer the world with what somebody else had build.

Instead, he turns back to Lincoln. “I wrote that joke too,” he points over his shoulder with his thumb. Lincoln nods again, like he understands again, when again he does not. Bellamy presses his lips together in a thin line. “Did Octavia send you? Because I’m okay.”

Lincoln considers this.

“No,” he says, but he means: yes.

“Clarke said I don’t have any bros,” he says, matter-of-factly, with a tone of premonition. “She said that and it’s true,” he raises his eyebrows at the last word, taking a deep breath that makes his shoulders go down again. “Oh my God.” He pauses, closes his eyes, and sighs heavily. “She’s right. My sister is probably forcing my brother-in-law to follow me around to stop me from fucking up, and that’s because I don’t have any bros to do it for me.”

Once more, Lincoln considers this.

“I don’t think any adult men use the word ‘bro’,” he ponders.

Bellamy opens his eyes, staring at him in disbelief.

Lincoln cracks a small smile, at his expense, not because of Clarke, far away from them, very likely clueless to their presence in the audience. “Look, I get it. Your girlfriend was very cool until she wasn’t. You were together for a while, the London incident happened, you cheated, and she got even by stealing your jokes. It happens, I guess, if you’re both comedians and weird people.”

He means it well, but Bellamy just gives him a look of contempt. 

“I did not cheat on her,” he says, but he can tell that after everything that happened, not even Lincoln believes him on this. The look of sure-I- _totally_ -believe-you-even-if-not-really that Lincoln gives him says as much. “And you don’t get it, that’s the thing. She stole my jokes! All of them! I had a tour coming up, and she used everything I wrote! That’s betrayal at its worse.”

Lincoln parts his lips, but Bellamy interrupts him, raising a hand between them.

“If you tell me one more time that you get it, I don’t care that you’re twice my size. I will punch you in the face.”

Lincoln smiles, properly this time. “I’d like to see you try.”

Bellamy snorts. “What, no correcting me this time? Not saying you’re _not_ twice my size? ‘Cause you aren’t.” 

Lincoln just keeps his smile.

Bellamy turns away from him again, and gives Clarke another long look. 

For a split second, he thinks she sees him, but she doesn’t react to it at all.

It breaks his heart a bit, but instead of even letting that register, what he does is tell Lincoln: “Two-faced, back-stabbing, not-as-funny-as-me, C-list celebrity fake American.”

And then he turns back to Lincoln.

Lincoln puts a hand over his shoulders, as if to claim his title as ‘bro’.

“You’re actually not American either,” he says, gently.

Bellamy ignores him, and lets him lead the way out.

#

**six months ago . . .**

“Come back to bed!” Clarke says, loud enough that the next door neighbors might listen, but neither of them seem to care.

Bellamy just smiles to himself, with his head down, and shakes his head a bit, pretending not to have heard. At least if she’s ignored, she’ll do something about it, and he’s counting on it. For now, though, in the few seconds it takes for his girlfriend to realize he’s not going to respond and the backlash to that, he focuses on the paper in front of him.

He couldn’t help it. The idea for the best joke occurred to him. It’s simple in its concept, even kind of silly. It’s about the time that Bellamy and Clarke went to Michigan and encountered a deer, later actually engaging conversation with it. They were both mindlessly drunk, and Bellamy kept telling her hours later that he was sure it could’ve been just a very big dog.

The joke is going to be his opener. Simple, but he knows he can deliver it.

He’d stumbled out of bed way too early in the morning to go to his study and get the first draft of the joke written down, even though he knew that he’d inevitably wake up Clarke in doing so. She sleeps lightly, like she doesn’t fully trust that the apartment is safe, and it’s unlikely that they’ll be attacked during the night by some crazy stalker. 

They are, after all, the Brangelina of comedy.

“Bel,” Clarke sighs sleepily, stopping on his door.

He turns to look at her, and bites back a smile, failing completely to hide how affected he is by just looking at her, his dimples showing without his permission. She’s wearing his shirt, ridiculously oversized on her, but covering just a few inches of her thighs. She’s barefoot, resting her weight against the side of the door, blond hair pulled to the side. Some laziness is there, sure, but mostly she looks devilish. 

He kind of maybe loves her.

“Why are you here? Come back to bed,” she asks again, but this time it sounds like an invitation, one that it’d be a crime to refuse.

Bellamy smiles apologetically, looking back at the mad scribbling in front of him. “I just had an idea for a joke. I’ll just finish it, and I’ll go back.”

She sighs again, shrugging. “Suit yourself.” 

But as she starts leaving, she looks over her shoulder, just once.

Bellamy looks at her, then down at her long legs, and he suddenly doesn’t care that much about the joke. Surely it could be an important one for his career, but not _right now_. He laughs to himself, at how he can’t really say no to her, and gets up to go follow her. He meets her in the narrow corridor of the apartment, wrapping his arms around her from behind, kissing the side of her neck more as a coded complaint than anything else.

She chuckles, turning around to face him, her arms falling around his neck, and kisses his mouth. It’s lazy and unhurried, just pressing their lips together to find a pace that suits them for now—she’s already on just his shirt, he’s already on just his boxers. They have time. It’s alright.

Then the phone rings, and they break the kiss, staring at each other with a frown of worry for a moment. It isn’t seven in the morning yet, and calls that come too early or too late can only mean tragedy. But Bellamy’s parents are both dead, as is Clarke’s father, so that leaves Octavia and Abby to worry about.

Tension comes, and they blink a couple of times. Clarke starts towards the living room, saying a weak, “I’ll just,” and leaving Bellamy with a frown in the corridor. 

Bellamy nods, even though she isn’t there anymore.

He makes his way to the living room as well, and finds Clarke breathing out in relief, or laughing, or something. But what he can tell is that she looks like any of them always look like when they find it’s not that serious of a situation. If you lose a parent—or in his case, two—you’re more or less always preparing yourself for bigger disaster. But it’s not disaster time yet, thankfully.

“It’s Kane,” she says, putting the phone away from her face. “It’s for you.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, taking the place beside her on the couch. Whatever it is, they’re going to have to talk about this. It’s not the first time their shared agent calls them on their home to talk about business, in weird hours. The whole concept of different time zones seems to have gone completely unnoticed by him, and it’s growing to be too irritating to let it pass. Bellamy thinks he’s Los Angeles now, so the call makes even less sense at 7am.

Clarke stays where she is, so he drops a hand on her thigh just because. 

She lets it, yawning.

“Hey, it’s Bellamy,” he says to the phone, and immediately adds: “Do you know what time it is in New York?”

“Don’t care,” Kane answers dismissively. He must be at a pub or restaurant, because there are all sorts of sounds on the other end that make him sound busy. Someone laughs hysterically next to him, and he talks to the person for a second before turning his attention to Bellamy again. Bellamy sighs heavily, dropping his head against the back of the couch, and Clarke chuckles lowly next to him, rubbing his hand on her thigh reassuringly. “Hey, Bel, great news. Who’s the best agent ever?”

“Any agent that doesn’t call me from L.A. early in the morning,” he dead-pans.

Kane laughs, like Bellamy really is the funniest man in America. “So that’s still me! I’m in London, baby,” he slurs. He’s drunk, has to be, and Bellamy makes a face, ready to say that this time, it’s he who doesn’t care. “I have the best news for you. You have a big American tour coming up next year, but what if I told you that _before_ the best tour of your life, you can do a small but equally amazing tour?”

Bellamy pauses. He parts his lips, but says nothing.

His heart speeds up, like he’s used to by now, whenever something career-related happens. He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to come up with something not desperate to say, but he can’t think of anything.

“I know, Bel, I know. Well, like I said, I _am_ the best agent,” Kane says, as if Bellamy had just gone through a gratitude monologue that left him closer to tears. He laughs weakly to himself, before adding: “So London. You leave in two weeks. We’ll do four shows, best places booked already, we start selling tomorrow, and you’ll be in England a week.”

“Whoa,” he raises his eyebrows, looking at Clarke. She looks back at him, blinking slowly, trying for a smile, though she doesn’t know how good the news are yet. “That fast?”

“What can I say? They want a piece of you!” he says, but he doesn’t really just say it, as much as he tries to singsong it to the Britney Spears 2007 song. It’s embarrassing even to listen to, but Bellamy can’t help the genuine smile that comes to his lips, that despite the bizarrely timed calls, he still does think that Kane is the best agent both he and Clarke could have asked for, as well as for a few more comedians and actors out there. 

“Thank you,” he says, and he means it.

Kane dismisses it. “Yeah, yeah. How about the interview on Jimmy Fallon interview in two days? Are you two excited? You’re going as a _couple_ , that’s got to be exciting. How’s Clarke?”

Bellamy looks at Clarke. She’s sleepy. Curious. On top of that, Kane has just talked to her a few minutes ago. 

“You’re drunk, Kane,” Bellamy says, still smiling a bit.

Kane snorts. “You’re boring. Goodbye.”

And he hangs up. Just like that.

With his eyebrows raised, Bellamy shakes his head. He puts the phone back on the coffee table, and looks at Clarke for what feels like a full minute. She slaps his arm lightly, saying, “Stop teasing! What is it?”

He grins, hand still on her thigh. “Kane got me four shows in London.”

Her jaw drops, and then she’s grinning too.

“Oh my God, Bellamy!” she smiles, and it’s like the whole room lights up too. She’s sunshine, making him feel warm just by being beside her. She claps like an overly excited child, and it’s contagious, he can’t help the giggle that escapes his lips. She straddles his lap, puts both of her hands on his chest, and declares: “I can’t believe I’m dating an _international_ comedian.”

“Oh, we’re good,” he says, smirking up at her, hands on her thighs, then sliding up to her hips, pulling her closer. “We’re so very good,” he adds, tone quieter this time, smile still on his lips as he presses his lips to her neck.

“Love you,” she says, fingers lost in the curls of his hair, smiling too. “Love you.”

#

tbc. 


End file.
